


What Feels Right

by Katyakora



Series: Killerwave Week [14]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, KillerWaveWeek2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katyakora/pseuds/Katyakora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody thought that his last fight in a jaeger had rendered Mick completely incompatible to drift. Of course, no one had thought to drift him with an untrained civilian who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Feels Right

**Author's Note:**

> For Killerwave Week 2 Day 7 - Movie/Fairytale AU or Crossover
> 
> Had some mad writers block all yesterday, so have some late half-assed jaeger shenanigans.

Caitlin should not have been anywhere near a jaeger. She was a neurosurgeon, her job was to make sure the pilots weren’t slowly having their brains melted by tech that barely got a chance to be properly tested before it was put into the field. Of course, testing the tech was why she was there at stupid o’clock in the morning anyway. Cisco wanted to test some adjustments he'd made to the new prototype and claimed all the pilots and techs were biased, so had roped Caitlin into being his guinea pig. In truth, she was a little curious about what the neural interface might feel like. Not that she would be experiencing a true neural interface, mostly they were just testing feedback responses in the suits. Or they would have been, if Mick Rory hadn't shown up.

 

Mick Rory had been the talk of the Coast City dome. A year ago, he and his co-pilot Leonard Snart had been in their jaeger Rogue Revenge, when the Kaiju they were fighting tore their cockpit in half. Mick had been presumed dead for two weeks before he was found, and both men suffered severe physical and mental scarring. Worst of all, the experience had rendered one of the most seamless teams the jaeger program had ever seen incompatible. There had been fears they wouldn’t be capable of drifting again at all, until Snart was matched with Barry Allen, to everyone’s surprise. Their jaeger, Cold Flash, already had two kills to it’s name. In contrast, Mick had gained a reputation for being so brutal in the trial ring that most pilots flat out refused to test with him.

 

They’d heard the alarms going off earlier, but being in R&D, they weren’t the ones being called to duty. Still, Cisco began the process of finishing up his tests so they could join the rest of the base in the tense wait to see who came out on top, jaeger or Kaiju. Caitlin was patiently waiting for Cisco to come and help her out of the harness when the sound of heavy footfalls that most definitely did not belong to Cisco caught her attention. Mick Rory appeared in the entrance, clad in a pilot suit. He looked her up and down for a moment, answering her confused look with one that might have been approval, before strapping himself into the other harness.

 

“Hey! What the hell are you doing?” Caitlin demanded once she’d gathered her scattered thoughts.

 

“Dude, you can’t be in there right now!” Cisco’s voice echoed from the intercom.

 

“Ramon, you’re gonna drop us, then you’re gonna initiate a neural handshake,” Rory ordered, ignoring everything they’d just said.

 

“Are you crazy?!” Caitlin sputtered, feeling her pulse jump at the idea.

 

“I am not doing that! Why the hell would I do that?”

 

Mick glared in the general direction of Cisco’s voice as he punched various buttons angrily. “Didn’t you hear? Golden Canary is down and they’ve lost all contact with Cold Flash. You either drop us now or we’re all losing friends today.” There was tense silence in the wake of his ultimatum. Caitlin could practically hear Cisco debating with himself.

 

“Do it,” she ordered, surprising herself. 

 

“Caitlin, are you sure? You’ve never done anything like this before.”

 

“No, but I know the science inside and out. I can do this.” If she said it firmly enough maybe it would be true.

 

“I’m so getting fired for this,” Cisco muttered, but more lights and displays began firing up as he readied the cockpit to drop.

 

“Hey, you’re the doctor, right? Snow?” Mick asked, his tone the softest it had been since he’d barged in. She nodded a little shakily, feeling her system already flooding with adrenaline. “Just let me take care of everything. All I need you to do is follow my lead. Don’t chase the R.A.B.I.T. and don’t get too caught up in the neural feedback.”

 

“I know,” she assured him. “Just, please don’t judge me for anything you see in my head.”

 

He snorted. “Likewise.”

 

Jittery with nerves, Caitlin barely heard Cisco’s warning before the cockpit dropped. Knowing everything she did about drifting did nothing to prepare her for the reality. It was like she’d stepped into a body that was not her own, bigger and unwieldy, with the instincts of a hard life etched into the muscles. She didn’t know what she’d expected from his memories, but what she got was fire. For every flash she got of important moments with people, there was a dozen more different images of dancing flames. She blinked sharply, feeling like the images might be forever burned into her retinas. Next to her, Mick shivered and shook his head.

 

“Neural handshake complete,” Cisco’s voice informed them, sounding like he could barely believe it. Then again, they had just managed to successfully drift an untrained civilian and a pilot largely deemed too unstable to be compatible. In theory, this shouldn’t even be possible. “Get ready to calibrate. Also, several very high ranking people are yelling at me through the door, so let’s make this quick.”

 

Caitlin felt something like a phantom tug and she instinctively raised her arms, looking over to see Mick performing the same movement. She felt something like pride that she knew didn’t belong to her, and the vague satisfaction of going through familiar motions. She wondered how Mick was handling having to deal with her fear and anxiety. She followed the tug, drawing on memories that weren’t hers to perform the calibration like she’d done it a dozen times. 

 

“Oh, would you look at that, my hand slipped and the hanger doors are opening. We are all so fired so you better not get yourself killed out there.”

 

“I got her back, Ramon, you just get us in business.” It was surreal to be able to feel Mick’s sincerity. He turned his head to look at her. “You ready for this?”

 

Caitlin’s grip on her control disc tightened and she nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

 

As one, they stepped out into the turbulent ocean.

 

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?!” Marshall West roared over the comms. Apparently Cisco hadn’t managed to keep the brass out of his control booth for much longer. “Killer Wave is not cleared for duty! Neither of  _ you _ are cleared for duty!”

 

“If they’re alive, I ain’t leaving them to die,” Mick stated plainly. “If they ain’t, I’m not letting that thing hit the city.”

 

“So you’re going up against a category III with a prototype jaeger and an untrained co-pilot?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“We have to at least try,” Caitlin spoke up, surprised that the confidence she felt wasn’t borrowed from Mick. Right now, they were the last chance they had at stopping this Kaiju and Caitlin found she would rather die than let that thing loose on the city, not when she was in a position to help. After all, that was the whole reason she’d joined the jaeger program in the first place.

 

“Well, clearly, I can’t stop you,” West muttered darkly, and both pilots took that as the closest to authorisation they were going to get. 

 

Cisco returned to the comms, guiding them to where they needed to be. The scene when they arrived was gut wrenching. Golden Canary was on it’s side in the surf, it’s barely flickering lights illuminating the ragged damage to its chassis. Cold Flash was on it’s feet but not faring much better, scrambling to keep the Kaiju from getting past it to get to either the fallen jaeger or the city. Based on the damage already done, the battered jaeger probably wouldn’t succeed much longer. It had been built for fast, intense strikes, not prolonged grappling.

 

They picked up the pace, blindsiding the kaiju with a shoulder charge. Unable to contact the pilots inside, Mick and Caitlin used hand signals to get Cold Flash to fall back to help Golden Canary.  The Kaiju got up and they planted their feet and met the beast’s charge. Caitlin was grateful for the time she’d spent helping Cisco test the feedback in the suits, so the pulse as the Kaiju hit them wasn’t a surprise. She still grunted since it was hardly pleasant, but she was still clear-headed and prepared to follow the mental tug from Mick that had them sending a crushing blow into the beast’s side. It's pained roared filled the air and they managed to get a few good hits in before a tail swung out of nowhere to slam into the cockpit. 

 

The structure held, but Caitlin felt a spike of terror through the drift, catching a glimpse of a moment in a different cockpit, a vivid flash of the agony of having the closest thing she had to a brother ripped from her head. The tail came down again and she instinctively raised her arms to guard the cockpit. There'd been no mental tug that time, the reflex and the movement had been all her. They took a hit to the side because of course the damn thing had two tails, and the Jaeger stumbled, barely staying on its feet. She could still feel the fear coming off her copilot, still hear the distant echo of two men screaming.

 

“Hey!” she yelled. “I know what you're feeling, but that's not happening today. We're gonna save them and we’re gonna leave this bastard nothing but ash!” That seemed to get his attention. He stopped staring into nothingness and looked at her.

 

“Ash?” he asked hoarsely. The tails swung at them again, but this time they caught one, once more in sync, crushing it in their hand. The other tail they managed to hit off course with their other hand. 

 

“Killer Wave is a prototype,” she explained. “All her weaponry is experimental.” She moved so they were gripping the tail in both hands. Borrowing memories once more to use the unfamiliar system, she twisted her control disc and activated the secondary weapon. Jets of supercooled chemicals shot out of their left arm, snap freezing the limb and they tore it off with a mighty crack even as the other tail hit them again. They staggered back, the severed tail still in hand, and Mick actually cackled when they swung the tail across the kaiju’s face like a club. Roaring, it clamped its jaws down on their improvised weapon and used it as leverage to drag them back into its range. Claws sank into the chest of their chassis and warning sounds began to alarm. They dropped the tail and brought their hands up in time to grip the beast’s jaw before it could snap down on the cockpit. The kaiju wrapped it’s remaining tail around their legs and began to squeeze, trying to topple them. 

 

The pressure against their raised arms was becoming unbearable when Mick activated their primary weapon.

 

The sudden jet of superheated plasma caved that side of the kaijus jaw and sent the rest of the plasma straight down the beast’s throat. Mick didn’t let up, maintaining the burning jet until the whole head was in flames. Only when it fell into the waves with little more than a crispy stump for a head did Mick stop. 

 

“Son of a bitch is down!” Mick announced triumphantly over the comms. “You can thank us later, West.”

 

“Just get your stubborn asses back to base,” the Marshal ordered, the sound of cheering loud in the background.

 

Caitlin knew she was probably shaking with adrenaline and the laugh bubbling out of her throat was a bit hysterical, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. They had just taken down a fucking  _ Kaiju. _

 

Next to her, Mick grinned knowingly. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

 

“I kinda wanna throw up, but yeah, that felt pretty damn amazing.”

 

“Don’t worry, first one’s always the worst.”

 

“First?”

 

His grin turned wicked and she really shouldn’t be thinking about how attractive his smile was when he could feel everything she did. “You really think they’re gonna let you hide back in R&D after you took down a Kaiju with zero training? Besides, you’re the only person other than Snart who could actually keep me focused.” His expression softened. “Hell, you managed to pull me out of the R.A.B.I.T. hole. Not even Len could do that…” He trailed off, and she knew from the phantom emotions churning her gut that he was thinking about their last disastrous attempt to drift.

 

“I just did what felt right,” she admitted with a shrug, feeling like she was intruding.

 

“Exactly. That’s what it means to be drift compatible.”

 

“Oh.” She thought about the way they moved in sync, even now as they made their way back to base. When she’d had vague daydreams of drifting, she’d never contemplated that the one person who fit her perfectly would be her opposite in every way. Yet it felt right, just like he said, like he filled space in her she hadn’t even realised was empty. A soft wave of heat had her looking over at him.

 

“What?” she asked, wondering what the feeling could mean.

 

“Nothing,” he deflected, although he was still smiling impishly. “You look good when you smile, is all.”

  
She felt herself blush and the ghost of a feeling grew, allowing her to finally identify it as affection. It felt like a warm, comforting blanket and she felt something similar answering within her. Their eyes met again for just a moment, and the spark of heat in her gut was definitely all hers. Caitlin was suddenly certain the giddiness she felt wasn’t entirely due to the adrenaline high and the bleed through the bridge was telling her she wasn’t the only one.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fourth idea for this prompt I started working on yesterday and it's the only one that actually went anywhere.


End file.
